


Not A favorable Wind

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2007, Episode: In My Time of Dying, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-04
Updated: 2010-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:55:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They get John's body on a Thursday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not A favorable Wind

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/72004.html).
> 
> I am obliged to desertport and flipmontigirl for helping me stand true and honest while telling this story. Without them this would have been just an incoherent ensemble of half-formed ideas.  
> As usual, many thanks to desertport for the awesome beta job and for always putting up with me. All the mistakes are mine.

They shop for clothes at a Wal-mart. Briefs, socks, a white t-shirt. Cotton pants a military grey that Sam's almost sure John would have liked. He stops, undecided, between two shirts of different shades of green; he strokes the fabric between his fingers – the stuff is good, he thinks, not so stiff with whatever shit they use to make it look perfectly pressed.

He looks up at Dean, question in his eyes.

_It's not like he would have cared,_ Dean says.

***

Dean drives them back to the hospital. They get John's body on a Thursday.

Elroy McGillicutty's body, actually, using the papers Bobby readied for them. John Winchester's whereabouts are unknown. Unknown to whom, Sam has no idea. He's pretty sure, though, that everybody who counts knows John Winchester's dead.

The morgue is way back behind the main hospital building. Dean drives there, past the main entrance, the ambulance parking lot and a small group of half-dead trees. The morgue is a small one-story building, the sidewalk littered with yellow grass growing in the creaks in the cement.

The documents that'll get them to John's body are wrinkled in Dean's left hand. He tries to smooth the papers before he gives them to the reception guy. The man is small, annoyed, lazily drinks his coffee, doesn't even look up. There is a snort of distaste when he looks at the crumpled sheets.

Sam feels the muscles of Dean's arm tensing alongside his own where they brush close, sees the scathing look he directs at the man's back. He's seen that look before on Dean, a barely contained edge of violence in the clench of his jaw, but his look crashes flat against the guy's apathy, the repetitive timbre of his voice when he gives them instructions.

Sam drags Dean gently toward the door and Dean doesn't resist.

***

The actual morgue is a floor underground; it smells of formaldehyde and death and an aftertaste of Lysol that sticks to the roof of Sam's mouth. It's a mix Sam's acquainted with, its familiarity not enough to stave off the acidic burn of bile building in the back of his throat.

Dean's walking a step ahead and all Sam can see of his face is the hard ridge of his jaw, the straight posture of his shoulder, the slow purposeful steps. He doesn't need to see it to know the expression Dean's wearing. It's the same fake mask of toughness, ineffective and thin, that slipped into place when John was declared dead.

It confuses Sam and so does Dean's economy of words, sparse, monosyllabic, brief chains of letters. _ Yes. No. Don't._ Over and over again. Like being caught in a loop, and different, so different from the unstoppable flow Dean sometimes lets stumble out of his mouth.

Dean moves slowly but surely along the hallway. Sam follows him. And their combined steps echo off the bare walls and resonate dully on the marbled surface.

***

They have to pass through some other guy, Mike-something, according to the tag pinned on his shirt, before they can finally get to John's… body, and there is something fundamentally wrong in the mere thought: reducing John Winchester's considerable will to bones and muscles and ligaments; a corpse now decomposing somewhere across a metallic door, cold and slick to the touch.

Sam has to stop for a moment, legs refusing to work, knees locked together. An invisible barrier he cannot pass through just there, on the doorsill.

It's a sign that Dean's some place far away, where Sam fears he can't go, that he doesn't notice Sam's not following him anymore.

Dean's already positioning a gurney under the refrigerator when Sam crosses the threshold; all he can see of Dean is his back when he lets Mike unfasten the latch with a curt nod. The scene stills, a picture imprinted in Sam's memory, filed away with all that is painful, unbearable.

Blue, like the colors of the room, metallic and cold and pitiless. Muted, like Dean's barely audible grunt when he takes part of John's weight. The imperceptible way his body sags under it. Mike's inane chatter, word after word blending together in the most incongruent soundtrack, and John's body under the black, rigid plastic. John's _dead_ body.

***

Deaths are signs. Mileposts on Sam's life: Mom's, Jessica's, John's. Each marks a turn, a swift veer to the left too abrupt for Sam to make sense of it. He's always sitting in the passenger's seat, watching through the windshield as the world rushes by, blurs incomprehensibly and finally settles on a different scenario. Sharp-peaked mountains where once there'd been a sweet valley.

The ride back to Bobby's is silent like it should be. Dean drives and for it Sam's grateful.

It's not that Sam's not driven after that night; it's just that this would be the first time that the three of them are in the same car.

***

The trip to the hospital had lasted all night long. Dean navigated through three states and pushed Bobby's truck until every metallic joint screamed and shook. Sam's sure something went progressively loose because of the speed, spent part of the ride imagining bolts and screws unraveling under the hood.

The ride back to Bobby's is slow, Dean's driving careful.

Sam closes his eyes against the light; the sun, through the trees, leaves an imprint of false colors against his eyelids.

At a crossroad, Dean stops, asks Sam to check on John. He says exactly that, _check on John_, voice scratchy, unused. Sam doesn't mind the chance to stretch his legs. Doesn't mind the chance to check on John, either. Would have asked Dean to stop if he had not.

The ride back is slow and Dean's driving careful. Their stops vary in the mysterious rhythm Dean's following.

Dean always stays inside the cab. Sam climbs down and checks the back of Bobby's truck.

Each time he raises the tarp that covers it, tries the cinches, pulls at them hard. Each time the dark bundle is exactly where they have put it.

***

The Winchesters thrive at night. Since the earliest Sam can remember, they've played a game with it, one made of seduction and repulsion.

And it's night again when Dean drives through the iron gates of Bobby's junkyard. The sun has left a memory of itself far away on the horizon, a false light degrading steeply to black.

Dean slows down when he catches Bobby in the truck's headlights. There, in the middle of the path, he's waving at them an unusual greeting, pointing ahead with a straight arm.

Dean apparently understands what Bobby wants, 'cause he drives beyond the house to the outbuilding behind it. Strangely enough, Sam had forgotten it was there.

When Dean kills the engine, the lack of movement, the sudden silence, all of it is disorienting, leaves Sam's head hollow. Dean climbs out of the truck, and Sam looks at him leaning heavily against the door. But the night is too dark and Sam can't see his face, only the outline of it against the headlights.

Sam stays inside, hears Bobby's quiet voice, silence like an infinite void where Dean's should be.

They take John's body inside the shed, Bobby and Dean. They do it fast, disappear and reappear in the doorframe between a blink. Bobby has a hand on Dean's shoulder when they come out and even in the lousy light Sam can see the tense lines of Dean's body, the need to wriggle out of it.

_Let's go inside_, Bobby says when they're even to Sam. Steers them gently toward the house with a promise of fresh coffee.

***

There are things a man notices only when he sits down and looks.

Like that time he saw the laced curtains Jess had hung on their bedroom window months after she'd done it. He'd said _nice curtains_, and her laugh had been startling and crystalline, had hovered over their naked bodies in a cool mist, caressed lightly his sated skin.

Like right now, while he sips coffee around Bobby's kitchen table.

They've been here countless times over the years. John, Dean and Sam. Always storming in and out with the urgency of the hunt, taking what John needed from Bobby and Bobby readily giving. And all those times, Sam has never noticed the clock hanging right above the front door. It's a weird piece, green and brown, probably old. Nice in a feminine way. Something Jess would have liked. Maybe someone bought it for Bobby.

And the clock, it ticks loudly, marks the silence while Sam draws lines and curves on the worn out wood, follows the pale veins of it, traces some obscure symbol he's most likely learnt on a past hunt, during a past life.

Dean sits at the head of the table, looks at the darkness outside, fingers pale and loose around his mug.

Bobby, right in the middle, takes in his hands the fragile silence, taps it with hard nails against the ceramic, a slow rhythm Sam's sure hides a song. Something familiar whose name and melody he can't name.

Twice now, Dean's straightened on his chair, angled his head as if listening to something, relaxed again when the only discernable sound is the wind whistling through the cracks in the windows, dancing useless circles in the dust.

There is nothing out there, not even Bobby's dog scratching with his nails against wood, barking useless and late warnings. There is nothing inside either, only the sound of their breath and uneaten sandwiches, cold coffee and the loud clock hanging above the door.   
_We have work to do_, Dean says in the end, and stands up, slowly dragging the chair against the wooden floor. The noise, in that tick-tocking silence, scratches the floor and Sam's ears.

***

They wait for Bobby in the shed. Sam looks around at the assortment of tools hanging on the walls, row after row of items resting on the shelves. The smell of oil is persistent, oil and gasoline.

John is present here and it's not because of his corpse lying on the ground. Sam feels past memories bouncing off the walls in this room, feels them creeping up, unexpected and half-forgotten. Loud.

The echo of John's voice. His impatient shouts when he would look for Sam, Sam hiding inside with a book stolen from Bobby's collection, escaping through printed words John and Dean's incomprehensible world.

The smell of his first smoke. He'd scrambled against the wall and waved frantically at the air in a futile attempt to dispel it when Dean had busted him. _Do you like it?_ Dean had asked. Afterward he'd hit his back with too much force when Sam couldn't control the coughing anymore. Laughed boisterously at his streaming eyes.

Sam wonders what memories Dean is listening to, standing there, stock still, in the middle of the room.

***

Bobby arrives, eventually. Brings white towels, alcohol, a bundle of white sheets he gives to Sam. _Make strips, four inches wide_, he tells Sam, who is grateful enough for the mindless task.

Dean aborts a step, gaze down, eyes straining to the place where they have put the body bag. He's not looking at Sam now, not even to wordlessly ask him if he's ready for it, if everything is all right, and Sam feels bad for wanting it so much.

Sam sits on the ground, instead, makes strips from old sheets, makes them four inches wide like Bobby asked him to. The cloth is worn down and it gives easily under Sam's hands.

He hears, more than sees, Dean and Bobby raising John's body from the ground. There's plastic rubbing together, a rustling sound that stops him, hands mid-air. He looks up, sees Dean taking hold of John, a hand under an armpit, the other under his hip, Bobby mirroring Dean on John's other side. They move smoothly, in synchrony under Sam's attentive eyes, put the bag on the work table with a soft thump. They don't ask him to help.

***

Dean opens the body bag, noise loud and metallic and catching on Sam's teeth. Bobby stops him before he can open the flaps; Bobby's hands are big around Dean's wrists, dark against his skin. They are gentle, soothing in the way Bobby always was, not needing words to be effective. _Go inside,_ he offers Dean, _let me do it_.

Dean shakes his head no without looking up.

_Sam?_ Bobby asks. Gives Sam the same out. But, like Dean, Sam can't take it. _It's all right, Bobby,_ Sam says. _Thanks_, he adds after a moment.

***

Death has shrunk John to human dimensions and the thought is unsettling all on its own, without even seeing John in this bare nakedness, stripped down and too small to fit Sam's memory. He'd been so big all his life, big and looming and tall, too tall to climb.

John is just a body in death, and it feels so wrong that Sam wants to avert his gaze, give him back the dignity he'd carried naturally in the straight set of his shoulders, the proud jut of his chin.

The smell of alcohol is strong, sharp and biting, and he can fool himself that the tears clouding his sight are because of it.

The process is silent and efficient. Dean's strokes with the washcloth are rhythmic, hypnotic in their evenness, not faltering even when he starts washing the lower part of John's body, when he's close to his belly, his genitals, and the act is too intimate to feel right and Sam can't look, irrationally ashamed on John behalf.

They finish, finally. Bobby appears at Sam's left carrying a small bowl, pours water from a silvery flask and adds grey powder from a satchel; he meshes it with his fingers. The substance is oily, like wet ashes, dark on the livid skin of John's forehead where Bobby paints a wide stripe. He does the same on his chest, right in the middle of it.

They dress John, briefs, socks, the grey military pants and the shirt Sam had settled for. He'd gone for the one in palest green, almost grey like the pants.

The white strips, the result of Sam's work, end wound tight around John's legs and chest and arms. Around his eyes and mouth and ears.

***

Another drive, brief this time, a couple of miles deep in the backwoods surrounding Bobby's property. Sam can still make out the lights of Bobby's place in the distance, a reassuring beacon in the dark.

The headlights stop on the pyre standing in a clearing, gleaming in the phosphoric light with its cheap wood. They put John's body there, breathing hard with exertion and bone-deep weariness.

Salt, gasoline and the loud click of Dean's Zippo.

Dean is nothing if not thorough.

Sam watches the flame catch. Hot against his skin even where they're standing. Feels the smell acrid and thick on his tongue carried by a traitorous wisp of wind. The fire brightens the night, reflects on the paleness of Dean's face. On his statuesque immobility.

Sam has never loved John more than now that he's dead. Must be some deficiency he has, something that escaped whoever programmed him, lost in the intricacy of veins and muscles and bones. Lost underneath his skin and impossible to correct. A fatal error.

And he asks Dean, because John maybe knew. Knew, maybe, where the error is. John maybe knew and told Dean.

***

On Bobby's front porch Dean stops suddenly, takes Sam's chin between index and forefinger. He angles Sam's face toward the light. He doesn't look at Sam's eyes, but lower, where the bruises pulse and ache and swell on his face. He looks at them as if for the first time, looks closely and Sam tries to relax under Dean's formidable focus.

So close, Sam himself can see the red, ragged line bisecting Dean's forehead.

Dean knits his eyebrows and for a long time he's perfectly still. He holds Sam there in his hands. Traps him, and Sam can't stand it, he can't. His eyes are filling again, burning sharply with the strain to keep the tears from falling, wetting Dean's fingers.

After a lifetime, Dean frees Sam.

_It won't leave a mark_, he says. _Don't worry_.

Dean leaves him there, standing uselessly on Bobby's porch. Walks slowly deep into the junkyard.

The day dawns on a clear sky. Should have been dark, Sam thinks, dark with clouds, loud with thunders and wet. With rain.

\--


End file.
